The burly man wasn't alone. There was another at the bottom of the stairs. Stan twisted his body, holding the first Italian in front of him. There was a pistol shot and the sound of a bullet smacking into solid flesh. The man whom Stan held screamed shrilly, his eyes flaring wide. Then all three of them were down. Stan leaped for the door and slammed it after him. A moment later he was sprinting through the low midway of tumbled arches and forlorn columns of the glory that had once been Rome. He caught another taxicab by the Colliseum, slipped the driver the contents of his wallet, and sagged against the cushions exhausted. A shot shattered the rear window of the cab and he felt vainly in his coat pocket for his heater. It must have fallen out during the long fall down the flight of stairs, he thought. Which meant that he was defenseless. He left the cab a few doors down from the alley and sprinted into the darkness, another shot whistling past his ear. He was almost up to the circle of shining black when the bullet plowed into the fleshy part of his back and he half stumbled, half fell into the pool of whirling blackness.... CHAPTER XII "_You didn't succeed, Martin. Come on--wake up so I can tell it to your face. You and the rest of the apes have lost forever!_" He stirred and gagged and then rolled on his side, feeling the pain from his shoulder lance through his body. There had been the shot and he had felt himself falling and then there had been a voice.... Tanner's voice. His eyes jerked wide open and he sat up, wincing at another flash of pain. "Finally awake, are you?" He turned. Tanner was on the small pedestal that held the hoop, standing nonchalantly in front of the circle of whirling black. "You'll be sorry you woke up, Martin. Frankly, I should think you would be wishing you were dead." He half smiled to himself. "There's knives in the kitchen, incidentally, in case you should want to do something about it. I imagine you have quite a guilt complex." Stan whipped his head around to look at the small box-like machine that kept score of the fusion packages. Only one light was still lit. The light for Chicago. Tanner smiled lightly. "Don't think you've won just because there's only one light left. Fifty fusion packages was our safety factor. We actually only needed one." Stan's face mirrored what he thought and Tanner read the look.